Will New Watchdog Improve Canada’s White-Collar Crime Reputation?

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is hoping the new capital-markets watchdog he’s pushing improves the country’s reputation as being soft on white-collar crime.

In a press conference Thursday, Mr. Flaherty acknowledged efforts by Canadian law-enforcement agencies have fallen short in dealing with alleged securities violations, highlighted by high-profile cases such as Bre-X Minerals and YBM Magnex. Much of the job of enforcing rules governing capital markets rests with either individual securities regulators or Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or both.

“Right now, the RCMP struggles in this area of white-collar securities crime. And we need to do better than that,” Mr. Flaherty said. His partners in the new capital-market regulator, Ontario and British Columbia, also cited improved investor protection as a reason for entering into this regulatory agreement.

Many executives express concerns about their existing cyber incident response plans, despite a number of high-profile breaches. The uncertainty surrounding cyber incident response presents an opportunity to educate the executive team on cyber resilience, the coordinated set of enterprisewide activities designed to help organizations respond to, and recover from, a variety of cyber incidents, while reducing their impact to business operations, cost and brand damage.

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Risk & Compliance provides news and commentary to corporate executives and others who need to understand, monitor and control the many risks that can tarnish brands, distract management and harm investors. Its content spans governance, risk and compliance and includes analysis of the significance of laws and regulations, the risks inherent in global expansion and the protective moves taken by companies.